Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/222

 years in cities.) They had scarcely looked at each other that morning―and scarcely spoken.

He looked back as the coach started and saw her sitting inside the big kitchen window. She waved her hand―hopelessly it seemed. She had rolled up her sleeve, and to Brook the arm seemed strangely white and fair above the line of sunburn round the wrist. He hadn't noticed it before. Her face seemed fairer too, but, perhaps, it was only the effect of light and shade round that window.

He looked back again, as the coach turned the corner of the fence, and was just in time to see her bury her face in her hands with a passionate gesture which did not seem natural to her.

Brook reached the city next evening, and, 'after hours,' he staggered in through a side entrance to the lighted parlour of a private bar.

They say that Lizzie broke her heart that year, but, then, the world does not believe in such things nowadays.